Grosjean apologetic after high speed crash

Romain Grosjean apologised to his Lotus squad after he suffered a high speed crash during the Russian Grand Prix.

Grosjean lost control of his E23 Hybrid towards the end of the long Turn 3 complex and suffered a heavy impact with the barriers, though fortunately the Frenchman was able to walk away from his wreckage.

"I lost the rear end in a very high speed corner going through Turn 3 and couldn’t recover it," he rued.

"We don’t know exactly why yet. We need to check what has happened – was it a driver error or something technical? - we’ll see.

"I feel sorry for the guys because there will be a lot of work to repair the car. I feel okay physically and I’ll certainly be a bit sore tomorrow morning, but I’ll be completely fine again after a couple of days.

"We lost some good points today but let’s understand what happened and look forward to the next race."

Lotus team-mate Pastor Maldonado was able to salvage eighth place for the team.

"It was a bit tough today but we opted for the right strategy from the beginning starting on the soft tyres and going longer on the first run," he said.

"Unfortunately we lost a lot of time on the second stint with the new super soft tyres. Our car didn’t perform as expected at the beginning of the run but then after a few laps we started to get back into the rhythm.

"We scored points today which is very positive for the team and hopefully we can continue to do so in the next races."